Talk:The Handler
Move to unnamed characters discussion Does this guy not need to be moved to an unnamed character page?--Acer4666 (talk) 10:28, October 5, 2014 (UTC) :I was about to ask the same question, but what category? Or we are treating him like Alpha 7, as The Handler was the only name people know him? :We currently put this guy and Vanessa Diaz under Day 9 characters category, but my points are, first, solitary takes place 2.5 years after lad and IMO based on the trend it looks more like a prequel to a possibly upcomoing tenth season instead of a wrap-up of the day 9 storyline. And second, which is also the problem confusing me, is that Jorge Ramirez, Moss weren't not under Day 6 characters category, while Scott Frank is a day 8 character. More strangely, Wu San a day 6 character while Li was only a mentioned (eu) character. I'd like to figure out the criteria for how we categorize these prequel/debrief characters. I remember there was a discussion before, but couldn't find it. --William (talk) 10:58, October 5, 2014 (UTC) ::He's never called "The Handler" anywhere but the transcript on 24 spoilers, a fan site, so this is unquestionably an unnamed character. ::I think it would be OK for "Day X characters" to indicate characters from "Season X" - a little abuse of terminology but "Day X" works better as an "in-universe" kind of indicator. As the prequels/add-ons are part of certain seasons, I think that works--Acer4666 (talk) 15:35, October 5, 2014 (UTC) :::No, Xander Berkeley was credited as Voice Of The Handler in the ending credits so I think it's plausible to make the page here. :::So you do agree to add Day X characters category to Moss, Jorge Ramirez and Mentioned characters (Day 6) to Li? --William (talk) 15:47, October 5, 2014 (UTC) :::I mean, the current category is perhaps the fittest one for him and Diaz. But if they announce that there's a season 10, which is imo very likely, would you categorize them as Day 10 Characters? --William (talk) 15:55, October 5, 2014 (UTC) ::::There is no way this is a named character. "voice of the handler"? how is that a name or codename or alias? It's a description of Xander Berkeley's role. If we keep this page, then every credited "passer by", "trapdoor agent" etc. needs pages. Which is a bad idea. ::::Yeah, the prequels and debriefs are treated as part of their respective seasons in other places on the wiki. 24: solitary is described, on the LAD DVD, as a "story extension" to live another day. Even if season 10 is made then that wouldn't change--Acer4666 (talk) 17:16, October 5, 2014 (UTC) :::::To be fair, this is pretty much like giving a page to the Spotter in Day 5 and rarely does any supporting character in one of these shorts ever reemerge in later seasons. We should just add him to unnamed antagonists for Day 9.--Gunman6 (talk) 21:17, October 5, 2014 (UTC) ::::::I would have to agree with Gunman6 said per above. BattleshipMan (talk) 21:31, October 5, 2014 (UTC) ::::Agree to move to an Unnamed page per Acer's reasoning. But are we sure he is an "antagonist"? I haven't seen the full Solitary short yet, but it seems to me that the motivation of Almeida/Diaz/hander is very unclear. They could be an "underground good guys" group exactly like Buchanan/Chloe Day 7, right? Maybe just Unnamed civilians for now? 00:44, October 6, 2014 (UTC) :::::We don't know if they're heroes or not but they are breaking the law by attempting to assist with Tony's escape from confinement so we could put them in a criminal section if we can't agree on their motivations.--Gunman6 (talk) 06:52, October 6, 2014 (UTC) ::::::Blue Rook, I afraid Gunman6 is right since we don't know their motivations, but breaking Tony out is illegal either way. BattleshipMan (talk) 07:19, October 6, 2014 (UTC) :::::Although I'm not the one who created this page, the primary reason prevents me from deleting the page is that there is no proper category for him. We only have Unnamed terrorists, not antagonists, and we can't determine their allegiances at this point. We may move him to Unnamed civilians page if we have to, but this sounds awful. This guy, civilian? Come on... :::::I don't understand why can't we use the Alpha 7 logic here. Unlike trap door agent or the likewise, he is , like alpha here, known as The Handler in his shady organization, just like Deep Throat or Mr.X from x-files. And Fox is sort of acknowledges that by listing the name in the credits. If you guys think i'm making a speculation, fine, but I think the alpha 7 case is applying the same logic/speculation. Or we can just make a compromise, an exception for the handler for his categorization is really a pain in the ass. :::::As for the break of law thing, you should bear in mind that our own protagonist has broken the law for numerous times. --William (talk) 11:52, October 6, 2014 (UTC) ::::::"What would Jack Bauer do?", that is the question. ::::::Seriously though, we could probably save time debating about the character's loyalties given how the show is notorious for having every other character be in the grey and just a list of all the various unnamed phone/cellphone contacts, add this character as well as the various other people (Nina's German contact, the Spotter, the family members called by that one CTU guard in Day 5, etc.) and just be done with it. --Gunman6 (talk) 17:18, October 6, 2014 (UTC) :::: BattleshipMan the illegality of a prison break plan does not factor in to our categorizations: Jack Bauer himself caused the hideous mass-prison break in Season 3... and we don't list him as an antagonist. And for all we know Jack could be working with the handler. Wouldn't be a crazy twist for 24. This is why my opinion is that the safest place to put this character for now is civilians. It's a harmless location. :::: William as I understand it, "handler" comes only from the credits, which are oou. Wiki 24:Canon states we may use the credits to gain "character names" (proper nouns) but "handler" is not. The character Alpha 7 specifically identified himself as "Alpha 7" iu, which makes his situation completely different, as the logic of his iu situation does not apply to the handler's oou title. (Unless "handler" is in the dialogue, correct me if I'm wrong, as I have not seen Solitary.) :::: Gunman6 a phone contacts unnamed characters page as you describe it probably will not gain traction. Your examples -- Nina's contact and Nathanson's "spotter" -- were quite clearly terrorists/terrorist collaborators... do you realistically want to move them out of Unnamed terrorists simply because they were talking on cellphones? :::: With all that being said, I still support the idea of moving the handler to civilians, until further details come out. 02:56, October 7, 2014 (UTC) :::::I never said we had to remove Nina's contact, the Spotter or the other off-screen characters heard over the phone(s) from their respective lists, only that they can be listed on another list as well. I figured that other users would remark that a Criminals list would be contradicting given that every other character, including Jack, has violating several laws but again since we don't know that he's a civilian and he's breaking the law, I feel far more content adding him to a "Unnamed Phone Contacts List" since it's simpler and we don't have to debate about the character's moral standing. It's straightforward and let's us know that "Hey, this is a list of characters we've all heard over the phone but we don't know their names so here it is." :::::The Handler character is never named on-screen, except in the credits. Also, given that he's voiced by George Mason himself, I doubt he'll get any extra screen time in any capacity. Again, here is how this can look like, see here. --Gunman6 (talk) 15:59, October 7, 2014 (UTC) ::::::Will reply there. 01:15, October 9, 2014 (UTC) :I really hadn't chimed in here because I wanted to see Solitary first. Now that I did, I strongly disagree with having the "Handler" as a separate page for the reasons stated above by both Acer and BlueRook. Thief12 (talk) 12:39, November 28, 2014 (UTC) ::At this rate, he might as well list him on his own page much like we did with Alpha 7 since no one will agree to move him to a contact list and keeps acting like he's a good guy when we'll never know anytime soon. He's not the same as an unnamed contact because all of those guys were not given any actual title or name, they were just background performers; this guy does by his title because it's the only name he makes himself known by. --Gunman6 (talk) 18:05, November 28, 2014 (UTC) :::An alternative was offered, to move him to the "Unnamed civilians" article, which is the safest route with the information we currently have. The beauty of Wikis is that we can always move him to another category if his character ever pans out. And as some others said before, it's not the same situation as "Alpha 7", which is a clear code-name, whereas "Handler" is more of a profession or work position. Sure, there's a mysterious aura to the "name", but I don't think that's enough to warrant its own article. And like other people have said, if we give him an article, we might as well give articles to lots of other unnamed characters. Thief12 (talk) 21:14, November 28, 2014 (UTC) ::::Add him to Unnamed government agents then because as we've stated before, he doesn't qualify as a civilian. --Gunman6 (talk) 00:52, November 29, 2014 (UTC) :::::Why he doesn't qualify as a civilian? I didn't see any argument against that. On the other hand, we don't know if he's a government agent, so then we would be speculating. Thief12 (talk) 01:02, November 29, 2014 (UTC) ::::::The character establishes that he's high up in one of the agencies, hence, why he's able to provide Tony with those high-tech glasses and talks over a secure phone line, neither of which a civilian, even one on this show, would have access to. --Gunman6 (talk) 01:09, November 29, 2014 (UTC) :::::::I don't remember neither Diaz nor the handler confirming he was part of any government agency. But if anything this show has "taught" us is that anyone, from well-funded terrorists to tech-savvy geeks, can have access to advanced tech and secure lines. Look, I agree that the man is probably someone inside the government, but at the end of the day, it's just speculation, until the show confirms the contrary. Thief12 (talk) 02:35, November 29, 2014 (UTC) ::::::::So since again, no one can agree on this character's background or an alternative list as a simple cellphone contact and no one can agree that his name is much like Alpha 7's code-name so where else could he possibly go?--Gunman6 (talk) 02:42, November 29, 2014 (UTC) :::::::::Unnamed civilians for now. Thief12 (talk) 02:51, November 29, 2014 (UTC) ::::::::::To move him here would be the same as moving him over to Unnamed gov't agents/officials and is also speculation. Something everyone can concur on since we have no way of verifying his status in society. --Gunman6 (talk) 03:11, November 29, 2014 (UTC) :::::::::::But "civilian" is a more broad label than "government agent". It gives us a bit more wiggle room in terms of what we know about the character, which is pretty much nothing right now. Thief12 (talk) 03:37, November 29, 2014 (UTC) ::::::::::::We still don't know if he actually is a civilian or not though. I recall around one, possibly two civilians during the entirety of the show who were great at hacking and getting into computers and still find it unlikely. I'd be down for creating an Unnamed hackers page though.--Gunman6 (talk) 06:06, November 29, 2014 (UTC) ::This quite clearly needs to be moved to unnamed civilians--Acer4666 (talk) 00:50, November 30, 2014 (UTC) :::Again, we don't know what he is other than a contact. Nothing is made clear about him other than him having tons of off-the-grid technology. He's part of some organization, hence, why he's helping Tony and having this lawyer work for him or someone else so "civilian" is not the right term.--Gunman6 (talk) 00:59, November 30, 2014 (UTC) ::::Technically, even government officials could be considered "civilians", so again, IF HE WERE part of a government organization (which we don't know) the safest place to put him for now is on the "Unnamed civilians" article. Thief12 (talk) 01:12, November 30, 2014 (UTC) :::::This this could mean that all of the unnamed government characters should be moved there and we don't want to have to revise that. Again, we just don't know much of anything about him so we should come up with another location aside from another "unnamed" type list. --Gunman6 (talk) 01:42, November 30, 2014 (UTC) ::::::No, that doesn't mean we have to move all the unnamed government characters to the unnamed civilians article because WE ALREADY KNOW they are government officials. But in a case where we don't know the precise profession, again, "unnamed civilians" is the safest and less complicated route. Thief12 (talk) 02:16, November 30, 2014 (UTC) :::::::We can't have it both ways and substitute others. Again, we don't know that he's a non-government guy or just an average joe in one of the various states, we flat out don't know anything about him other than his code-name and being willing to break Tony out of prison. Let's just keep him as a stand-alone page then since we can't concur on where he should be redirected.--Gunman6 (talk) 02:37, November 30, 2014 (UTC) :::::No. All of the characters on unnamed civilians could possibly be undercover government agents because "we don't know for sure", but that would be a stupidly pedantic point of view. This guy is no different to the others on the civilian pages, other than the fact Gunman6 seems to have some imagined backstory for him, so he should go on the civilian page. That's all there is to it--Acer4666 (talk) 13:06, November 30, 2014 (UTC) What if Nathanson addressed his spotter as "Alpha", should we create a page for him? Another unrelated but similar case: In Vanishing Point, Anh Hsu addressed his operatives as Yee, Uhr', Sahn and such, which means one two three respectively. The proper spelling should be "Yi", "Er", "San", but no matter what these were not their names. They were numbers, or code names if you considered that way. These guys were military officers under Hsu's command so they were not only known by these code names. So if one day we start creating pages for the novels, do they meet the criteria? --William (talk) 13:26, November 30, 2014 (UTC) :For the record, it's also "imagined" that he is a civilian with no ties to anyone. He's not just randomly helping Tony get out for no thing else in return and he has government level technology. I'm guessing that the Vanishing Point characters would also meet the same requirements as Alpha 7 I guess. I'm again just going to vote that this be a stand-alone page since he is not a civilian and no one agrees that he's a gov't worker and that The Handler just suffice as a code-name, not as a job title or description.--Gunman6 (talk) 17:41, November 30, 2014 (UTC) ::Let's back down here and look at the facts: ::*Our Inclusion policy forbids us from making an article for the character since he is unnamed. ::*Our Canon policy forbids us from considering the credits as a basis for making a separate article for an unnamed character. Regardless of our interpretation of how "The Handler" is perceived, as far as we know, that's just a description of what he does, a position, profession, or whatever (an example, Steve Navarro was James Harman's handler) ::*We don't know what is the exact profession or affiliation of the man. Anything we might deduce is just speculation. He can be a terrorist, a businessman, a politician, a high-ranking government official, all of which are ALSO technically civilians. The reason that we don't classify all unnamed terrorists, gov't officials, etc. as "civilians" is the fact that we do know WHERE to classify them further. Kinda similar to Nina's contact, who was clearly aiding a terrorist, which is why it goes on the "Unnamed terrorists" article. ::*The difference with "Alpha 7" is that he identified himself as such. As it is now, "The Handler" could just be the name that the post-production crew decided to label the character with, since he is handling both Diaz and Tony. ::With those facts in mind, it is my belief that the route to go is to add him to the "Unnamed civilians" article, with the hope that new material comes out and we can resolve this in a more clear manner. Thief12 (talk) 20:34, November 30, 2014 (UTC) :::That's the main issue, nothing is clear about this man and come to think of it, he might be associated with someone or just be an old colleague of Tony's and that's it. All the other unnamed civilians we have there are pretty clear-cut with little association whatsoever for the most part and this Handler guy isn't specified and he's not stated as a civilian. I can see that some find that page to be a simplified way of putting him there but this guy isn't just a typical throw-away character and it almost feels like a cop-out if we do put him there because while we can insist that his name is only a description. Also, many of the hackers and shady people on this show have been the type who just aren't official residents of any particular country so again do we truly believe that he's a citizen?--Gunman6 (talk) 20:50, November 30, 2014 (UTC) ::::You're grasping at straws. First, you're parting from the premise that "unnamed characters" are "throw-away characters", which isn't necessarily true. That might just be the way you see them. About him not being identified as a "civilian", well he doesn't have to identify himself as such. As far as we know, he's just a man, period. "Farah's neighbor" could very well be a policeman, a doctor, a government spy, or a terrorist, but based in what we saw on LAD, we list him as a "civilian". The same can be said about this man. He could be anything, but based in what we saw on Solitary, we should list him as just a "civilian". Finally, about your last statement about hackers, countries, and citizens, I don't think that has any bearing with this discussion. I really don't know why you bring it up. Thief12 (talk) 21:01, November 30, 2014 (UTC) :::::I bring it up because we see many villains (hackers included) who have one ambition and that's to escape to another country, millions of dollars in hand and hang out in another hideout. Max and Adrian Cross for example don't have any country to answer to due to shifting around country to country, assisting with terrorist attacks. We don't know that the Handler has a country he's officially listed in and giving the mysterious nature of many of this show's characters, I sincerely doubt there would be a file on him other than one that a spy agency managed to dig up. Yes, you could argue that I've chosen a subjective stance with the "throw-away" term but we have everything from airline passengers to ticket agents who are often one-note at best. Yes, we know he's a man but he's no ordinary person either. Could we just make a list for "Unseen characters" then? --Gunman6 (talk) 21:15, November 30, 2014 (UTC) :A whole new article for what? 2 or 3 characters? Again, that's a more complicated solution than the one that fits the facts with the situation without speculation, which is to move him to "Unnamed civilian". And for the sake of discussion, what if we were to never hear of this character again? even if new material comes out, let's say that we never hear of this "handler" again, then all the importance you're attributing to the character wouldn't exist. Why? because ANYTHING we deduce right now, how important or not he is, what he does, what are his affiliations, etc. is just speculation. Thief12 (talk) 21:34, November 30, 2014 (UTC) ::I'm not keen on how many unseen characters we have total but I won't speculate on that portion. I have no doubt that we won't see the Handler ever again but we are also speculating that he's a civilian. His character is important in that it will help to allow Tony to make a prison escape in the future for a future installment that may or may not come to fruition, that's all his importance is instilled upon. --Gunman6 (talk) 21:44, November 30, 2014 (UTC) :::It's not speculation. It's going with the information we have. Again, what we know about the man is as much as we know about a lot of characters in the "Unnamed civilians" article, and nobody is arguing that any of the characters there isn't a civilian. Like I've said many times, based with what we know right now, he is a civilian. If new material comes out, and it is revealed that he is the Director of the Department of Defense, then we'll move him to "Unnamed government officials", but based on the information we get when we get it. And if it is later revealed that he has terrorist intentions, then we'll move him again to the "Unnamed terrorists" article, but again, based on the information we get when we get it. There's no speculation there. Thief12 (talk) 21:49, November 30, 2014 (UTC) :: Gunman, to restate: if the handler identified himself as "the Handler", then he would be eligible for the article he has now. But he did not. Apparently, "handler" strictly comes from the end credits. Now, it is true that we can use end credits for proper nouns (names), but "handler" is not a proper noun, it is a common noun. :: ... Which forces us into the realm of one of the unnamed pages. At this point, I believe it critical to recall Proudhug's stated purpose when he created the unnamed civilians article. So, it took me a awhile to track this down, but after digging into this wiki's "Congressional Record" (so to speak), here is our answer. It is from a very early discussion (Forum:Unnamed characters) following the inception of the unnamed pages themselves. The key line of course is: with "civilians" housing the leftovers. To paraphrase, the civilians pages isn't just for "bystanders" and "store owners" and all that... its an intentionally-broad repository for any characters which are unclear. It is a catch-all article, and always has been. :: We normally don't have to dig into the discussion history of a page creator's original intent, but hey, judges and lawyers have dug up old debates and handwritten notations of long-dead lawmakers in judicial proceedings to try to descry legal intent in unclear cases. To me, this settles it. We put the Handler in civilians, there to stay until and if something more substantive comes along. 09:04, December 1, 2014 (UTC) :Hopefully this discussion is finally over, but just wanted to make a comment about one of your points Blue Rook - had the guy identified himself as the "the handler" (getting rid of the suggestive capitalisation from the credits which I think is what started this page being created) we wouldn't make a page for him. It's a common noun, as you say: This guy says the line "I'm the foreman", but we shouldn't make a "The Foreman" article for him. Alpha 7, as a codename, is more appropriate for an article title (I'm still not 100% convinced on it personally, but that's a discussion for somewhere else)--Acer4666 (talk) 17:10, December 1, 2014 (UTC)